Open Innovation, partnerships with start-ups double in six years: two out of three large companies involved in 2024
In recent years, collaborations between companies and start-ups have become increasingly frequent: while in 2018 only a third of large Italian companies used them, within six years the percentage has almost doubled, reaching 62%. The same applies to open innovation initiatives, activated by 88% of companies with over 250 employees and by 98% of those with over a thousand employees. As emerges from the latest report of the Startup Thinking Observatory of the Politecnico di Milano, open innovation is a phenomenon that is now widespread in Italy, with further margins for growth in terms of impact and strategic value.
Collaborative innovation has entered into corporate strategies, now the results need to be measured
Open Innovation refers to the approach whereby companies combine their own ideas and resources with those of others, to develop technological skills, identify new solutions and accelerate growth. This philosophy has two directions. The inbound open innovation introduces stimuli from outside into the company, through collaborations with universities, incubators and accelerators, or Venture Capital instruments. It is the most widespread approach in Italy, because it requires lower resources and involves lower risks. The outbound open innovation, on the other hand, enhances internal innovation by taking it outside the company perimeter, for example through joint ventures or independent spin-offs.
According to the Politecnico di Milano, in 2024 59% of large companies had a specific budget for inbound initiatives, compared to 38% in 2020. This is encouraging, even if the resources allocated remain relatively small: on average, just under 4% of the total funds allocated to the ICT area.
The results obtained are mainly of an exploratory nature: intercepting new technological trends (64% of companies) and identifying business opportunities (44%). In last place is the explicit increase in turnover, a figure that mainly reflects the difficulty in accurately measuring the results of these initiatives. More than 60% of companies recognise the need for adequate tools to quantify their impact and intend to develop them in the near future.
Innovative startups: 14.5 billion in turnover and a key role in strategic sectors
In the Italian innovation system, startups are among the most effective players in transforming research and experimentation into market solutions: in 2024 they will be among the external partners most used by large companies, after universities and consulting firms, according to the Milan Polytechnic.
Last year, innovative startups achieved a total turnover of €14.5 billion (+8% compared to 2023) and an added value of 3.7 billion (+12%), according to a survey published in 2025 by Assolombarda. These figures also include former start-ups that, having reached maturity, have left the register of innovative companies. In the 2019-2024 period, both indicators showed almost continuous growth: the average annual turnover more than doubled, rising from €358,000 to €830,000, as did the average added value, which rose from 204,000 to €476,000. The same applies to the employment generated, which is particularly relevant in strategic sectors for the country's innovation and productivity:more than half of the workforce is employed in high-tech areas of manufacturing or services, representing 4% of the workforce in these sectors.
Open Innovation and Research: the TIM Group's Strategy
In the Italian panorama, the TIM Group's open innovation programme ranks among the highest in terms of investment and maturity in collaborations with startups, according to a recent study by InnovUp and Assolombarda. The company collaborates with innovative companies of all sizes and geographic origins in themain strategic areas for digital transformation: AI, cloud, cybersecurity, IoT, next-generation networks and new technology enablers for the customer platform, which simplifies the customer experience by integrating selected, quality services in various sectors, from entertainment to energy.
To foster these relationships, tools such as TIM Growth enable industrial collaborations with companies with high business or technological potential, making available internal assets and providing, where necessary, targeted investments with TIM Ventures. A concrete example is the recent TIM Smart Infrastructure Challenge, which involved more than 100 innovative Italian and international companies and seven partners, including businesses, research institutions and innovation hubs. Among the award-winning projects, CAEmate launched a commercial collaboration with TIM Enterprise for smart infrastructure monitoring, testimony to the value generated by the Group's open innovation ecosystem.
Internationally, the group is a member, among many others, of Alaian, an alliance between some of the world's leading telecommunications operators that allows it to connect with the world's best startups and innovative companies, and is part of the European Ipcei Cis programme, dedicated to the development of a sovereign Edge Cloud Computing infrastructure. Over the years, TIM has built a national network of innovation centres, thematic hubs and collaboration platforms starting from the Innovation Lab in Rome, Milan, Turin and Catania, strongly rooted in the territory. The Rome Lab is proposed as a true 'house of innovation': a space that brings together institutions and enterprises around the key technologies of digital transformation. Inside the Innovation Lab in Turin, there is the Customer Innovation Center, set up by TIM Enterprise and Google Cloud dedicated to AI and cloud applications for strategic sectors such as smart city & smart land, tourism, manufacturing, finance.
Also in Turin are the TIM Group's historic technological innovation laboratories: 9,000 square metres of equipment housing over 200 researchers. The company participates in more than 20 European and national projects, placing TIM among the top Italian companies in terms of funds received, and manages a portfolio of more than 2,200 patents, of which 15% are developed together with universities. Also confirming the strong link with the academic world is TIM's membership of the Restart Foundation - the reference programme for innovation in the telecommunications sector - which sees the collaboration of Italy's leading universities.
In addition to this, TIM also participates in territorial research and experimentation initiatives, such as the Competence Centres and the Houses of Emerging Technologies promoted by the Ministry of Business and the Made in Italy. Centres where the benefits of adopting technologies such as 5G, AI and the Internet of Things in industrial processes can be concretely tested and where TIM works with local administrations to support urban experimentation of emerging solutions. In Turin in 2021, in order to develop advanced digital skills in schools, SMEs and start-ups, theOpening Future programme was born from the collaboration between TIM Enterprise, Intesa Sanpaolo, Google Cloud. Through training and networking initiatives, the project has already involved over 20,000 students and teachers, helping to train the professionals needed for the country's digital transformation.
